[W]hen first it dawned on
human wisdom that the same thing breathed in animals as in
mankind, it appeared too late to avert the curse which, ranging
ourselves with the beasts of prey, we seemed to have called down
upon us through the taste of animal food: disease and misery of
every kind, to which we did not see mere vegetable-eating men
exposed. The insight thus obtained led further to the
consciousness of a deep-seated guilt in our earthly being: it
moved those fully seized therewith to turn aside from all that
stirs the passions, through free-willed poverty and total
abstinence from animal food. To these wise men the mystery of the
world unveiled itself as a restless tearing into pieces, to be
restored to restful unity by nothing save compassion. His pity for
each breathing creature, determining his every action, redeemed
the sage from all the ceaseless change of suffering existences,
which he himself must pass until his last emancipation. Thus the
pitiless was mourned by him for reason of his suffering, but most
of all the beast, whose pain he saw without knowing it capable of
redemption through pity. This wise man could but recognise that
the reasonable being gains its highest happiness through
free-willed suffering, which he therefore seeks with eagerness,
and ardently embraces; whereas the beast but looks on pain, so
absolute and useless to it, with dread and agonised rebellion. But
still more to be deplored that wise man deemed the human being who
consciously could torture animals and turn a deaf ear to their
pain, for he knew that such a one was infinitely farther from
redemption than the wild beast itself, which should rank in
comparison as sinless as a saint.

Races driven to rawer
climates, and hence compelled to guard their life by animal food,
preserved till quite late times a feeling that the beasts did not
belong to them, but to a deity; they knew themselves guilty of a
crime with every beast they slew or slaughtered, and had to
expatiate it to the god: they offered up the beast, and thanked
the god by giving him the fairest portions of the spoil. What here
was a religious sentiment survived in later philosophers, born
after the ruin of religions, an axiom of humanity: one has only to
read Plutarch's splendid treatise "On Reason in the Beasts of Land
and Sea," to return with a tingle of shame to the precepts of our
men of science.

Up to here, but alas! no
further, can we trace the religious basis of our human forbears'
sympathy with animals, and it seems that the march of
civilization, by making him indifferent to "the God,"
turned man himself into a raging beast of prey. . . . [Now] our
creed is: "Animals are useful; particularly if, trusting in our
sanctuary, they yield themselves into our hands. Come let us
therefore make of them what we deem good for human use; we have
the right to martyr a thousand faithful dogs the whole day long,
if we can thereby help one human creature to the cannibal
well-being of five hundred swine."